The Mac Dashboard doesn't seem to get much love these days and a decrease in the amount of widgets being made for it means people have likely moved on to dedicated apps for most of their widget purposes. Still, it's an extra screen on your Mac and that means there must be something you can do with it, right? Let's run through a few different ideas for turning the Dashboard into a dedicated screen for certain tasks.

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The key is to embrace Dashboard for one of two ends: a fun screen or a useful screen. Don't try and load it up with everything cool you can find, instead, use it for singular services that are useful to you. Start by hitting up the official Dashboard widget page and find hings that are useful for your workflow. A few built-in widgets, like sticky notes and the calculator are clearly useful, but here are a few ideas for what you can do with the screen you might not have considered.

Monitor System Usage

You won't find a shortage of great system monitoring utilities for your Mac, but most of them sit cozily in your Dock or menu bar. That's good for heavy users, but if you really just want something you can check in on occasionally then the Dashboard is a surprisingly good place to put them. You have a ton of options to choose from, but here's a few of our favorites.

Time Machine Buddy: Use Time Machine? Wonder what and how it's doing? This simple little widget keeps you updated on what the backup utility is actually up to.

Track Packages and Game Scores and Keep Your Browsers Clean

If you're anything like me then you repeatedly check the status of shipments and packages by searching through your email, finding the link, and heading over to the UPS or FedEx site. Then you repeat this process repeatedly until the package arrives on your doorstep. Instead of wasting time doing that, a widget like Delivery Status lets you drop in your tracking numbers and it then shows you the status.

If your checking-on-things procrastination vice is more about the score of the big game, that's easy enough to do as well. The ESPN widget built into Dashboard should to the trick for most people, but you'll find plenty of more dedicated options if you're only interested in keeping up with one or two teams.

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The idea can be applied to nearly anything you're always checking the status on. The point is to take it out of your workflow environment and browser and stuff it away on a screen you probably rarely use for quick access so you can continue on with your day.

Turn it Into a Zen-Like Work-Recovery Screen

We've shown you how to change the desktop background in Dashboard with a Terminal command and you can also do it with the Lion Designer utility. Changing the background screen isn't just about making the dashboard aesthetically pleasing. It's also a great way to create a tiny sliver of sanity on your desktop. Get rid of all the widgets, load up your favorite, calming image, and when things are getting a little hectic in your day load up Dashboard for a little sanity.

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Set it Up Just for Notes

If you're looking for a good place to stuff ideas the Dashboard is an incredibly useful place to do it. The built-in stickies serve as a good place to jot down a quick note, but if you're looking for a little more function, Dashnote syncs everything you type directly with Simplenote, making it an easy way to keep track of all your notes without running a desktop or webapp. If you'd prefer another option, reader timothymcn also points to Notefile, which syncs notes between iOS and the Dashboard.

Store a Cheatsheet for All Your Keyboard Shortcuts

We all love keyboard shortcuts, right? They're a great way to save time, but they can be difficult to remember. Dashkards is a great way to keep them handy without clogging up your desktop. The widget has built-in support for most major apps and webapps, including Gmail, Chrome, Evernote, and most Apple apps. Even if you don't ever want to use Dashboard for anything at all, Dashkards is incredibly useful.

Set Up Your Favorite Webapp for Streaming Music and Get it Off Your Main Work Screen

One of the handiest Dashboard tricks is the webclip function. This works great as a player for Google Music because you can hide it away on another screen and not worry about killing your web browser and then killing your music.

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Head over to your Google Music profile in Safari, click File > Open in Dashboard, and then click "Add." Now head back to your Dashboard, click the "i" on your newly created webclip window, and uncheck the box "Only play audio in Dashboard." Now you have quick and easy access to Google Music (or Pandora, or any other web-based music player you like) straight from the Dashboard. It comes in handy if you're the type to hate having a bunch of tabs open or you just like having a clean, work-centric desktop without any distractions.

Just Kill it All Together

Still not really seeing the point in Dashboard? That's okay, it's not useful for everyone and thankfully you can just kill the process altogether and restore system resources in the process. Load up Terminal and type this command:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO

Now restart Finder and your Dashboard will be killed and no longer sucking up precious system resources.

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The above are just a few different ideas for getting more use (or in some people's case, any use) out Dashboard. Do you still find yourself using Dashboard, or have dedicated apps replaced the once-handy widgets?